Wolfenstein: New Order – Pax East 2014

April 18, 2014

I’m not really a FPS fan but I was one of the faithful PAX East attendees that waited in the ‘forever’ line for Bethesda’s upcoming re-boot of the franchise. 22 years ago I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D; it was the first PC game I ever played and it gave me hours upon hours of enjoyment killing Nazis and then eventually MECHA-HITLER!

When the re-boot was first announced I was excited but kept my expectations at the middle of the road because, yes, I was able to re-live my childhood in the current age of the PS4 and XBox One, but was not happy with Endrant/Activistion’s take of the game because something just felt off about it.

Although I was not able to watch the trailer over and over again while waiting in queue for the game, I have kept up with the trailers and all the other YouTubers who had early access to it last year. The character design and levels are certainly at the same level with a lot of triple A titles such as The Last of Us and Infamous: Second Son.

Now it’s my time to play. The PAX demo starts with a very short cut scene of BJ Blazkowicz re-surfacing from the water surrounded by sinking dead bodies and then they throw you right into the battlefield of hell where you must sprint forward into a bunker to avoid being torn apart by aerial bombs and gunfire.

Two thing right off the bat that I liked and did not like; I really liked that sprint because like the game, it’s intense and as I played the game it helps immensely because you can find cover faster and rush Nazis if you run out of bullets and stab the hell out of them. I did not like that one of my favorite parts of the game is gone: BJ’s face at the bottom. Call me nostalgic but I missed that and it would have been the greatest feature to have, but I guess in the age of Call of Duty and Battlefield, it would be a little too much…maybe even too cheesy.

One dynamic that I saw while playing was the fact that BJ’s health does not regenerate automatically and I realized that after picking up the item that does increase your life, The Nazi helmet. You collect helmets from the dead soldiers and that increases your life…a little. I think having that feature adds to the challenge of the game because I found myself dying a lot in this game more then say, Killzone, and the load time to re-start the game was a almost annoying. Speaking of Killzone, I could not get around the feeling that Wolfenstein : The New Order reminded me of a Killzone DLC with Space Nazis just because of the way the Nazi soldiers looked.

Moving around and shooting is quite familiar if you have played a basic FPS game and with little to no instruction you can maneuver around and have a lot of fun killing everything and anyone you see. A surprise I found while trying to switch guns is the fact that they did bring over from the original game the ability for guns akimbo; assault rifles, hand guns, you name it and it was really fun to shoot soldiers to excess with double the fire power. It was not always accurate so your best bet is to use it sparingly.

All in all, I really liked it and I don’t normally enjoy FPS games a lot these days. Given the free time I would love to get this game when it comes out on PC, that does not mean I am against consoles in the slightest! I just want to play it like I did as an impressionable, corruptible youth.

Wolfenstein: The New Order, will be available in North America on May 20, 2014 and throughout Europe on May 23, 2014 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. As an added bonus, everyone pre-ordering the game will be invited to access the DOOM beta with their copy of Wolfenstein. For more information on the DOOM beta access pre-order bonus, as well as applicable terms and restrictions, please visit: www.wolfenstein.com/DOOM.